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I am most of the way through Hotline Miami 2 and goddamn I wish I didn't have to press the shift key to do a long look. I feel like this game needs it all the time since the maps are so massive.
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Jun 1, 2015 05:13
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edit: what the gently caress happened there
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Jun 1, 2015 05:14
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RenegadeStyle1 posted:I didn't see the reveal coming but at the end of the day I thought it was dumb because it didn't matter and actually made everything seem even dumber. Right from the get go he has arcane knowledge no one should have, spends more time in the fade befriending demons than anyone else in the franchise could ever do without turning into a demon, knows about a magical demon-repelling castle in the mountains that's been lost for Maker knows how long, and conveniently knows everything there is to know about the breach, rifts, Corypheus, Corypheus' powers and artifacts, and multiple other minor plot points that he happily divulges whenever applicable even though it's drilled into your head over and over throughout the game that all this poo poo is stuff lost to the ages and no one should know any of it exists or is possible. By the the three or four hour mark it becomes pretty clear he knows way more than he was letting on. I half expected him to be Corypheus there for a beat. But yeah, it didn't matter because he had no impact on the plot whatsoever other than to provide convenient exposition at key moments and the entire reveal is just Bioware grasping for a shock factor.
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Jun 1, 2015 05:48
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Finished REMake over the weekend and nearly quit due to one of the final puzzles (draining a fountain) being seemingly unsolvable. Problem was the in-game 3D viewer for items was screwing me over, I had to open up the Last Book Vol 1 and 2 by examining them at just the right angle. I'd tried previously and had no luck, getting the same generic message no matter what. The 3D viewer in general is a bit of a pain as they put items in with other items in them just to make you use the viewer. Even worse was these first aid kits weren't opened by examining the latch on the front, but by rotating and examining the lid 
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Jun 1, 2015 06:59
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Captain Lavender posted:At this point, that Blizzard even tries to make games with stories, I want to give them a little white "Participant" ribbon for their effort. They've been so deficient for so long that it's just kind of cute and plucky at this point. Darksiders 2's Diablo-style loot grind was so goddamn stupid. In the end it's a brawler just like its predecessor, so there's no appreciable difference between an axe that hits for 300 and an axe that hits for 400 except that I get to fight less. Maybe it's in the game because the game itself is so loving long and you need something to keep it fresh.
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Jun 1, 2015 07:04
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So is there any reason at all to play Dragon Age past the first game+its expansions? The first one was pretty fun as a classic fantasy romp that let you be a surprisingly assholish savior.
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Jun 1, 2015 07:13
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Byzantine posted:So is there any reason at all to play Dragon Age past the first game+its expansions? The first one was pretty fun as a classic fantasy romp that let you be a surprisingly assholish savior. DA2 is pretty boring but it tops DA1 in that most major questlines lead to you loving up horrifically and accidentally committing mass murder.
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Jun 1, 2015 08:09
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Byzantine posted:So is there any reason at all to play Dragon Age past the first game+its expansions? The first one was pretty fun as a classic fantasy romp that let you be a surprisingly assholish savior. DA:2 has half a cast of awful characters, a fairly neat storytelling method, pretty lackluster party cosmetics, and the worst most god-awful loving terrible horrible gameplay of any RPG to date. The skills are dull, the enemies are all boring, the same maps get reused over and over again, and there's almost always an inexplicable second or third wave of enemies that just rise up out of the ground, making combat always last two or three times longer than it should. It's a B- in storytelling and an F in being fun, it averages out overall to a D experience. Skip it. DA:I is solid enough, you'll enjoy it
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Jun 1, 2015 10:10
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Captain Lavender posted:At this point, that Blizzard even tries to make games with stories, I want to give them a little white "Participant" ribbon for their effort. They've been so deficient for so long that it's just kind of cute and plucky at this point. When I was 9 or so reading the Diablo and Warcraft 2 manuals I thought Metzen was the Shakespeare of the 20th century, maybe you're just the wrong demo. I totally agree about Darksiders 2, the annoying loot system almost ruined the game for me. Just more tedious crap to worry about.
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Jun 1, 2015 11:44
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The Moon Monster posted:When I was 9 or so reading the Diablo and Warcraft 2 manuals I thought Metzen was the Shakespeare of the 20th century, maybe you're just the wrong demo. Weren't they before Blizzard changed the definition of 'plot' in the company's internal dictionary to 'tale of a noble hero turning evil because of an external corrupting force', though? When people talk about Blizzard's writing, there's usually a specific range they're talking about.
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Jun 1, 2015 12:32
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Blizzard does a fascinating job writing the plots and character backgrounds of their games on paper. They do an absolutely horrendous job transposing it into a video game. I've never played a Blizzard game where the story wowed me but really the plot always gets skipped anyways since it is irrelevant to the game which is collect loot or die tryin' At this point they might as well skip the plot of a new Diablo game and just say "You're a guy who is gonna kill the devil (again) and pick up tons of shiny loot along the way...focus on the latter of course." Just break the fourth wall and outright say it.
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Jun 1, 2015 13:35
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Might And Magic X does the "tossed in prison without your gear" in the expansion, after you've beaten the main game. You're like level one million and all your melee dudes are completely reliant on their gear while your casters just throw lightning around like it's candy. The initial replacement gear you get is early game stuff. Combat is unavoidable. There are forced stealth puzzles that, on failure, lead to instadeath and thus to ridiculous loading times. What I'm saying is gently caress The Falcon & The Unicorn expansion.
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Jun 1, 2015 14:12
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Lord Lambeth posted:edit: what the gently caress happened there This is also how I feel about Hotline Miami 2
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Jun 1, 2015 14:18
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The Moon Monster posted:When I was 9 or so reading the Diablo and Warcraft 2 manuals I thought Metzen was the Shakespeare of the 20th century, maybe you're just the wrong demo. I mean, the things the little manuals talked about was a whole lot better than what was in the actual video games. The Warcraft 3 manual had great world-building stuff going on in them and then the W3 campaign was good because it wasn't focused on any one character so they had the ever-present corrupted hero (Arthas) but they also had the other campaigns to balance out the poo poo.
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Jun 1, 2015 16:28
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Warcraft 2 and 3 were released before all or most of the retcons, so that's a point in their favor.
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Jun 1, 2015 16:41
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ElGroucho posted:This is also how I feel about Hotline Miami 2 Yeah this game is kind of a disappointment. The music is good, at least.
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Jun 1, 2015 18:00
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I'm getting pretty sick of the main threats in Dying Light being the zombies that spawn behind you the moment you turn around and the fall damage which is basically a dice roll. Sometimes you can jump off a bridge, nbd, other times half a foot takes half your health off.
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Jun 1, 2015 22:02
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Byzantine posted:So is there any reason at all to play Dragon Age past the first game+its expansions? The first one was pretty fun as a classic fantasy romp that let you be a surprisingly assholish savior. As others have said DA2 is pretty bad, but Inquisition does a good job of summing up what happens in it via dialogue with returning characters from DA2, so if you did skip it you wouldn't be missing anything. Inquisition however left me with a sour taste in my mouth despite enjoying it. The gameplay itself is baller as hell and the subplots and side quests, especially the ones revolving around your companions, are very engaging. But the end just kind of fizzles out and made me feel like I had just spent 60 hours of playtime for nothing. The only reason I'm not 100% pissed at the game is that a lot of the stuff in between the beginning and the end is fun, but just don't go in expecting any of it to actually lead anywhere. Play up to the point where you only have like three missions left then just quit and make up the ending in your head. It'll be more satisfying than what actually happens.
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Jun 2, 2015 05:46
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The plot of DAI is kind of wonky. It starts off with this whole "Breach in the sky" thing and the only thing anyone talks about is closing it. Except after three or four story missions you just kind of unceremoniously fix the problem and that's it. The game then starts up a whole new plot about this bad guy.
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Jun 2, 2015 12:57
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RBA Starblade posted:I'm getting pretty sick of the main threats in Dying Light being the zombies that spawn behind you the moment you turn around and the fall damage which is basically a dice roll. Sometimes you can jump off a bridge, nbd, other times half a foot takes half your health off. Get the skill that lets you roll out of a fall, mash button every time you jump. Not a fix, but it's finally reduced my falling deaths to less than regular zombies.
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Jun 2, 2015 17:40
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muscles like this? posted:The plot of DAI is kind of wonky. It starts off with this whole "Breach in the sky" thing and the only thing anyone talks about is closing it. Except after three or four story missions you just kind of unceremoniously fix the problem and that's it. The game then starts up a whole new plot about this bad guy. The bad guy who was introduced in DLC for Dragon Age 2 no less. 
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Jun 3, 2015 11:24
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The Witcher 3 has many little and not so little nibbling flaws, which mar a good experience, and they are generally concentrated in the gameplay (the PS4 version): - outside of combat, Geralt moves very heavily, as though he needs to build up momentum to start up, and when he does start up, he breaks out into a jog, which is very inconvenient if you want to walk up to something that's nearby (the devs probably knew of this problem, because you can loot containers from a bit of a distance) - you can only jump about 1 meter down without losing health, any distance higher that that starts damaging your health and more than a 4-5 meter is fatal, which is dumb - you can roll at the end to mitigate the damage, but it's hard to react and since the falls don't have to be very high it's hard to gauge just when you're in danger of falling and fatally spraining your ankle - combat is clunky, Geralt swirls around like he always does, but because of that you can become stuck in an opponent for a while, on the horse you can also very slowly swing the sword and aiming the horse is a pain. On the highest difficulty very few thing does not kill you in two to three hits, but the bad enemy AI certainly helps - they really can't deal with dancing around them, which I'm grateful for - inventory system is a mess; on the PS4 there's no way to sort items (at least I didn't see it), you end up picking up a lot of random junk which might be helpful because crafting needs it, but what actually is helpful remains a mystery until you find an item needing it. There's a weight limit to your items, and the crafting components are included in that, so now I carry a half of my default weight limit at all times. There are also no separate tabs for somewhat objects, such as notes/books, junk to sell, plants and other alchemy components, weapon/armour crafting components. Also, normally games allow you to switch between tabs using R2/L2, but not this one - you have to scroll back up to the top of the menu and then use left/right while the menu hitches to load the next tab - the font size is small; it's readable, and obviously you'd have a HDTV playing on a PS4, but I have a hard time reading it and in turn reading through the inventory can be a bit troublesome, especially since there's a lot of reading to do. I'd really like it to be bigger - there's a lot of "points of interest" on the map, but so far (a few hours into the No Man's Land/Novigrad area, some time after the prologue) very few of them are anything more than a random monsters' nest/den and/or a treasure chest to loot, which does not seem all that different from the standard fare for open-world type games. Still, the treasure chests are often guarded and sometimes by a mini-boss, so at least it might lead to an interesting fights - the framerate is inconsistent and there are often slowdowns - not to a crawl and nothing game-breaking, but noticeable enough to think what could have been - the EXP is scaled, and if you are over the level of the main quests you get less points; I don't know if it evens out at the end, though - the Polish version has grammatical differences and I've seen at least one instance of a Polish dialogue that was either translated from English or written by someone who did have an access to the rest of the scene, but the former is far more probable; that's important to me because I heard that the different language versions were supposedly made concurrently (and not be translated from the English version), and if I'm not mistaken in my observation, that'd obviously be not true That's a lot of little things, and they're often in the way - I like the game, the quests are generally interesting and involving, and there are some interesting fights, but most of those flaws seem really really obvious to spot; I don't know about technical things, but you don't have to be a game designer to notice inventory being a mess, weight limits being introduced, unwieldy controls and fatal jumps are a problems for the game. Oh well, I still pre-ordered like a moron I am. Szurumbur has a new favorite as of 12:34 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 12:02
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Szurumbur posted:
Pretty sure you can use R1/L1 to switch tabs. It doesn't make navigating those menus any less poo poo. Edit: whoops looks like you mean in the inventory section. I meant between inventory, alchemy, world map, etc. Yeah it's poo poo.
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Jun 3, 2015 12:07
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I find it strange that Dragon Ball: Xenoverse doesn't let you play as a woman of Frieza's race, even though it presumably has them (Frieza had a family, after all). I mean, hell, I didn't know Majin Buu even was part of a distinct race, and that race has women (also, female majin are the best  ) so I don't get what the deal is there.
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Jun 3, 2015 13:59
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muscles like this? posted:The plot of DAI is kind of wonky. It starts off with this whole "Breach in the sky" thing and the only thing anyone talks about is closing it. Except after three or four story missions you just kind of unceremoniously fix the problem and that's it. The game then starts up a whole new plot about this bad guy. Honestly, the Breach might as well be a giant glowing text box reading "REWRITES" hovering over the first act of the game.
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Jun 3, 2015 14:10
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U.T. Raptor posted:I find it strange that Dragon Ball: Xenoverse doesn't let you play as a woman of Frieza's race, even though it presumably has them (Frieza had a family, after all). I mean, hell, I didn't know Majin Buu even was part of a distinct race, and that race has women (also, female majin are the best It's because Frieza had a woman's voice in the Dragon Ball Z dub and every 90s kid thought he was a she.
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Jun 3, 2015 14:20
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U.T. Raptor posted:I mean, hell, I didn't know Majin Buu even was part of a distinct race, and that race has women (also, female majin are the best He's not. That's an import from the Korean MMO: Fat Buu got bored and lonely after the series was over, so after watching porn he decided to create a woman and get his groove on.
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Jun 3, 2015 15:46
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muscles like this? posted:The plot of DAI is kind of wonky. It starts off with this whole "Breach in the sky" thing and the only thing anyone talks about is closing it. Except after three or four story missions you just kind of unceremoniously fix the problem and that's it. The game then starts up a whole new plot about this bad guy. The main villain was so lame, too. He seemed really threatening the first time you encounter him but after that he's just this loser whose rear end you whoop constantly and you're always one step ahead of. I even really liked the nameless Venatori goons as villains in their own right but they get overshadowed by just how lame their boss is.
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Jun 3, 2015 15:50
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Witcher 3 was by almost all accounts a fantastic game but I just cannot help but feel that the game would have been even better if it was just straight up an Action game instead of Action-RPG. Someone in the thread mentioned how Witcher 1 was serviceable and for me it feels like we've just went from that rhythm-based monstrosity to another kind of serviceable. If the combat was just slightly more towards the Darksider, Dark Souls or Devil May Cry end of the spectrum it could be so good. 
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Jun 3, 2015 19:51
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The Witcher 3 is now my favorite game of all time, mostly because of how much effort they put into making side quests meaningful and well-produced. If you're someone with a job and a family it means a lot to be able to jump in and pound out a cool quest line in an hour. That said....the Eastern European roots are still showing. Games developed in that region actively hate the player and there are still some small remnants of that in here. First, the coolest items are scattered in chests (and barrels) in locations with no reasons to visit, ever. You literally have to roam the countryside and hope to stumble upon them or just use online guides. Second, the crafting system is so poorly explained at first that you will definitely be kicking yourself as a new player once you figure out how it works. Third, leveling is a crapshoot from the start - you have no idea what will help and what won't.
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Jun 4, 2015 05:00
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Agreed on the crafting system but you'll be kicking yourself for not taking advantage of it sooner, if anything. For those who haven't played it, you can collect all kinds of poo poo like flowers and plants for potions and whatever. Some of these ingredients are a pain to find early on, and you might hesitate to use your stronger stuff because after decades of other open world RPGs you don't want to go and collect the ingredients to make another Super Potion Oil or whatever. ....Except you never need to make more. Potions and oils and all that jazz refresh automatically when you rest as long as you have an ultra-common item on you.
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Jun 4, 2015 05:19
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It took me forever to understand that but once I did, I loving love Witcher 3's potions. Definitely not a thing dragging the game down.
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Jun 4, 2015 05:27
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I'm 50 hours and 5 respecs into Wild Hunt, and although I figured out that potions were multiple use, for some loving reason I've been ignoring decoctions because I thought they were single use. I'm an alchemy build on death March! I needed that poo poo!
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Jun 4, 2015 07:33
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All right, unless I'm missing something obvious, I've met a Boss in a story quest that's impossible to defeat for me - Nithral in a Velen quest with Keira. He can instantaneously raise an impenetrable, damaging barrier, inside of which he regains HP. This barrier is connected to enemies he summons and disappears when they're defeated. The problem is: - the barrier damages you simply for being near it, you don't have to attack him - it also stuns you for a moment - the enemies are not bothered by the barrier, so if they choose to fight near it, they can - the enemies are fast and run all over the arena - the HP regen is insane - doing damage as quick as I could I managed to kill enemies and he regained HP up to 90%, from about 15% - he can do it whenever he likes, as many times he likes, it doesn't seem to be linked to a particular stage of the fight or HP level (so far the most times he did that in a fight was thrice, all of them taking him from being nearly defeated to full/almost full HP) So if there's any particular trick I can employ, I ask for it, because otherwise I just can't progress - even knowing that there's a limit to activation of the ability would be nice; I'm on the hardest difficulty. The room before was also awful, this entire quest is - after defeating the first boss and looting the body I've fallen to an other enemy and had to reload the after-fight checkpoint, which has the body already vanished (thankfully they had a checkpoint before the fight, too, so I just had to redo it). And to think that I'd chosen to do it because it was lower level than the other one and presumably easier. Keira was a great help during the first boss fight (drawing his attention, mainly), but in this one she's just a hindrance. Also whoever decided that you can't skip all of the cutscene, only a line of dialogue, is a moron. Edit: cool, the boss decided not to use it this time and just stood there blocking, what an epic fight. It's still badly designed, but I'm glad it's over. Szurumbur has a new favorite as of 10:19 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 09:58
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That boss also highlights how maddening the soft lock can be - more than once Geralt decided attacking the explosive barrier that provided full immunity to the boss was a more pressing target than the closer, angrier demon dog nibbling at him. The actual regeneration of the fight is intentional though, I'd assume it's meant to be balanced by you having an AI partner in there (who can break your crowd control and actually be a liability  ).At the risk of triggering the Witcher 3 thread's population, the game is really inconsistent. The writing, the characters, the locations, the quests and your interactions? All memorable. Diverse, each character feels unique, the investigations are genuinely interesting and I'm wanting to pursue side quests to see how they play out. The combat though...jesus christ. The fights are far, far too layered for their own good and feel entirely binary. You have bombs, you have weapon oils, you have special items, you have potions - all those things designed to give you more options and tools in combat, but in practice this comes down to "don't use them and make the fight much harder" or "faff around in your inventory to use them and make the difficulty a complete non-issue". Geralt feels clumsy and has issue targeting the biggest threat, the camera moves slower than the action, hitboxes and animations are unreliable (you can take huge damage from counter-attacks that haven't begun to animate and even kick in when the target is taking damage), so on and so forth. While it isn't a game breaker (the focus is very much on story) it's a big disappointment given how much time you're going to spend hunting monsters. I could use a wide variety of tools to even out a fight with this griffon, hoping the terrain doesn't keep snagging me as I dodge around and that I don't clip through his wings, or I can just chuck a firebomb and murder him while he's flailing around on fire.
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Jun 4, 2015 10:47
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Honestly, I sometimes get the feeling that the aspect of the game's development that was most rush was the playtesting - some of those flaws are really obvious to anyone who have played the game for more than a few minutes and either they didn't test it enough or just said "gently caress it, ship as it is". because otherwise they'd have had those decisions deliberately and that'd be just stupid. Monsters are also cool, some random Nekker in the plains takes about 20 hits to kill (quick ones, but the heavy ones aren't all that more powerful). A boss golem? About thirty - they should've made all of their security comprised of Nekkers and Drowners, no Witcher would pass through.
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Jun 4, 2015 11:27
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Szurumbur posted:All right, unless I'm missing something obvious, I've met a Boss in a story quest that's impossible to defeat for me - Nithral in a Velen quest with Keira. He can instantaneously raise an impenetrable, damaging barrier, inside of which he regains HP. This barrier is connected to enemies he summons and disappears when they're defeated. The problem is:  -Get his health down, he goes into the shield and summons the dogs to recover HP. -Kill the hounds and you fight him again. -Whittle his HP down and goes into another shield and more dogs. -Kill those ones and he'll fight to the end. You don't really have any point to run into his shield, you have tons of space to fight. What bugs me about the combat is that striking someone doesn't cancel their animation, so in group combat you'll just go tit-for-tat hurting each other at the same time. And you can't apply oil in combat. At least give the player a grace period at the start of combat to apply one if they want.
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Jun 4, 2015 12:54
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Croccers posted:What bugs me about the combat is that striking someone doesn't cancel their animation,
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Jun 4, 2015 14:49
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BBJoey posted:both of these are wrong. for the former you have to do a sufficient amount of damage relative to the enemy's health, if you're only grazing them you won't interrupt their animation. for the latter I have no idea what gave you that impression because you can definitely apply oils mid-combat. Yeah enemies have a stagger threshold it appears. Strong attacks will usually 9/10 times stagger a foe and knock them off guard. Light attacks, unless you're a lot higher level than the foe, won't stagger. Same applies for you as well. Killing level 5 wolves at level 15 I barely get scratched and can't get staggered. Also for anyone that wonders why some mobs are randomly more powerful: some enemies are stronger during different times. Night time seems to make most enemies a bit tougher while some enemies seem stronger in certain places. Not positive but drowners seen stronger near water to me. Maybe they're just higher level. Location seems very important to fighting in this game which is something I found myself liking. Then again gently caress that wyvern on the tower where you find that piece of gryphon or cat armor. I couldn't for the life of me draw him away so I danced with him on top of the tower and just went ham on him while praying I didn't fall. Oh and you definitely can apply oil during combat since I did it during that fight.
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Jun 4, 2015 14:57
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I've definitely had moments where I've been in combat and the game tells me I can't apply an oil. So there's something there.
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Jun 4, 2015 15:03
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